An airplane pilot had had a particularly difficult flight and a rough landing. The airline had a policy which required the first officer to stand at the door while the passengers exited, smile and give them a "Thanks for riding Royal Airlines." But, in light of his bad landing, the pilot had a hard time looking the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would have a smart comment. Finally, everyone had gotten off except for this little old lady walking with a cane. She said, "Sonny, mind if I ask you a question?" "Why no, Ma'am," replied the pilot," "what is it?" The little old lady said, "Did we land or were we shot down?"

SHALOM...Z

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GREAT SPIRITS ALWAYS ENCOUNTER THE MOST VIOLENT OPPOSITION FROM MEDIOCRE MINDS E=MC2

"despite the appearances of exterior photographs, the Boeing 757-200 did not “only damage the outside of the Pentagon.” It caused damage to all five rings(not just the outermost one) after penetrating a reinforced, 24-inch-thick outer wall."

THE FBI JUST RELEASED NEVER BEFORE SEEN PHOTOS OF 9/11 PENTAGON WRECKAGE

After surreptitiously releasing to the public one week ago, the FBI unceremoniously announced today the unprecedented release of never-before-seen images from the attacks of September 11, 2001, and some of the pictures evoke still more questions.

While all of these images appear to at least generally align with the official account of what happened with Flight 77 that day, three images cannot be explained — because they seem to defy logic.Assumedly taken from an aircraft hovering overhead and from an angle behind the blasted hole, three images show the rounded chasm cleaved into the building’s outer ring — but the burned stone from fires resulting from the explosion doesn’t extend into the inner area on the inside of the Pentagon’s second concentric segment.

SHALOM...Z

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GREAT SPIRITS ALWAYS ENCOUNTER THE MOST VIOLENT OPPOSITION FROM MEDIOCRE MINDS E=MC2

Discovery of Florida panther kittens near Everglades buoys hope for the endangered cats

by David Fleshler

April 2, 2017, 3:00 AM |Reporting from FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.

Florida panther kittens have been discovered in a part of the state where they had not been seen before, a sign that the endangered cat is expanding its range.

Trail cameras have captured photographs of a female panther with two kittens in Charlotte County north of the Caloosahatchee River, showing that the panthers’ breeding range has crossed a river long considered a barrier to the expansion of the species.

The discovery gives further hope for the survival of a species once thought either extinct or close to it, showing that panthers have found a way to conquer territory beyond the swath of southwest Florida where the vast majority of them live.

“This is good news for Florida panther conservation,” said Kipp Frohlich, deputy director for the habitat and species conservation for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “Until now, we only had evidence of panthers breeding south of the Caloosahatchee. These pictures of a female with kittens indicate there are now panthers breeding north of the river.”

Although male panthers have long roamed north of the river, having been denied territory in the species’ core range by dominant males, the first female panther was only documented north of the river last year.

The Caloosahatchee River, which flows along the northern edge of the Everglades, empties into the Gulf of Mexico about 10 miles southwest of Fort Myers. Cameras deployed at the Babcock Ranch Preserve Wildlife Management Area confirmed the female’s presence and then found the kittens.

Panthers remain threatened by real estate development that chips away at their core habitat in Collier and Lee counties, from the fast-growing suburbs of Naples and Fort Myers.

Environmentalists, while heartened by the news, say the panther’s land still needs more protection.

“It’s great we now have conclusive proof that Florida panthers are reoccupying their native habitats,” said Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are so fortunate in Florida to have such impressive creatures still sharing these lands with us. Now we need to do everything we can to ensure they have a place in our future by conserving the space they need to thrive.”

Once thought to have declined to just 20 or 30, the species has responded robustly to conservation efforts, including the protection of territory and the addition to the population of Texas panthers, called cougars, to provide genetic diversity to a population that was becoming inbred. In February, state and federal wildlife agencies announced more good news for the species, sharply revising upward the panthers’ population estimate, from a maximum estimate of 180 to 230.

The panther’s core range runs from the ranchlands west of Lake Okeechobee through Big Cypress National Preserve to the southeastern part of Everglades National Park, with some venturing into the outskirts of Naples and Fort Myers.

They kill deer, hogs and other animals. Males claim huge territories for themselves, forcing younger males to roam to the fringes of their habitat, which has often taken them north of the river and into central Florida.

The increase in the panther population has not been greeted with applause throughout all of southwest Florida.

Developers worry that the presence of an endangered species will make it difficult to build on their land. Hunters don’t like the competition for deer and hogs. Ranchers and homeowners have lost calves, goats, chickens and pets to the panthers. A few panthers have been shot over the past few years, with the perpetrators rarely caught.

Record numbers have been killed by vehicles in the last few years.

But state officials say news of the kittens is further evidence of the species’ rebound.

“This verification of kittens with the female demonstrates panthers can expand their breeding territory across the river naturally,” said Darrell Land, the state wildlife commission’s panther team leader.

Brian Yablonski, chairman of the wildlife commission, said, “This is a major milestone on the road to recovery for the Florida panther.”

They have a special “protector-protected” relationship and their affection towards each other couldn’t be any more evident. Ingo lovingly guards Poldi, who apparently “doesn’t know how to live free.”

The owlet hatched two days after his six brothers and sisters, therefore, has always been very vulnerable due to his small size. Comparatively, Ingo was raised to by a family of strong, and oftentimes ruthless, police dogs.

“They respect each other and they can read each other,” says the photographer.

They have a special “protector-protected” relationship and their affection towards each other couldn’t be any more evident. Ingo lovingly guards Poldi, who apparently “doesn’t know how to live free.”

The owlet hatched two days after his six brothers and sisters, therefore, has always been very vulnerable due to his small size. Comparatively, Ingo was raised to by a family of strong, and oftentimes ruthless, police dogs.

“They respect each other and they can read each other,” says the photographer.

THAT STORY OF THE DOG/OWL FRIENDSHIP SURE PUT A SMILE ON MY FACE. THANKS SWAMPRAT.

Japan Times

Former U.S. defense chief’s North Korea strategy: Deal with it as it is, not as we wish it to be

by Jesse JohnsonApr 3, 2017

“We must deal with North Korea as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

That was the key phrase in the preface of a report handed to the Japanese, South Korean and American leaders after then-U.S. defense chief William Perry’s unprecedented 1999 visit to Pyongyang.

Nearly 18 years later, those words still ring true for Perry. The former defense secretary under President Bill Clinton has become one of the most visible faces of a growing movement urging Washington, as well as other key nations, to set realistic goals and again engage Pyongyang diplomatically over its burgeoning nuclear and weapons programs.

According to Perry, recent U.S. policies and strategies toward the North, lacking a clear understanding of Pyongyang’s aims, have failed out of the gate. The result has been a ramped-up level of progress in its weapons programs unforeseen by U.S. analysts and government officials alike.

“I believe our policies ought to be oriented around that assessment of what their goals are,” Perry told The Japan Times in an interview. “I think our negotiations ought to be oriented around what their goals are and our policies, our strategies, ought to be oriented around minimizing dangers. I don’t think our negotiations or our policies have been.”

This could include moves such as moratoriums or deals on halting long-range missile programs and nuclear tests in exchange for certain carrots like economic aid and recognition.

Not acknowledging the motivations behind North Korea’s provocations, Perry alluded, could end up seeing the U.S., South Korea — and in turn Japan — embroiled in another Korean conflict.

In a January commentary for the website Politico, he wrote that it is probably too late to dismantle the North’s nuclear program. Instead, he said, the goal must be shifted to containing them.

Citing Sigfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who has made four visits to the North’s Nyongbyon reactor, Perry wrote that negotiations are “doomed to continue to fail” if they are based on the premise that it will give up its nuclear weapons.

He said the U.S. could start off with more modest goals using Hecker’s “Three Nos” (1. No new weapons; 2. No better weapons; and 3. No transfer of nuclear technology or weapons), in addition to incentives previously offered to Pyongyang. Achieving these goals would not only be of great security value, but could also be a “stepping stone” for follow-up negotiations with an ultimate goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, Perry said.

Tapped to be North Korea policy coordinator by Clinton in 1998, Perry oversaw a review that ultimately brought Washington closer than it had ever been to reaching a deal to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

Perry, who was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor in 2002, now operates the William J Perry Project, a nonprofit effort to educate the public on the ﻿﻿ dangers of nuclear weapons. He lectures often, traveling last month to both China and Taiwan.

Last month’s trip was reminiscent of his time as defense chief, shuttling throughout Northeast Asia, where Perry was active in bringing together the U.S., South Korea and Japan in the three allies’ bid to bring stability to the Korean Peninsula.

In 1999, he even delivered to the North a proposal by Clinton that the 50-year-old economic embargo against the country be lifted gradually in exchange for a series of major concessions, including an agreement to end its long-range missile program.

Perry’s legwork laid the foundation for a flurry of visits by top officials from both countries and a growing view at the time that a deal could be reached.

But as the Clinton administration wound down at the end of 2000, and new President George W. Bush prepared to enter the White House, that momentum dwindled.

The U.S. had been “tantalizingly close” to sealing a deal with North Korea to eliminate its medium- and long-range missiles and end its missile exports, Wendy Sherman, former special adviser to the president and secretary of state for North Korea policy, wrote in a New York Times editorial in March 2001. She urged Bush to seize the chance.

Ten months later, the ground had shifted. The U.S. was reeling, wounded by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and looking for vengeance, and Iraq, Iran and Islamic terrorism had become the focus of the White House.

Lumped in with Tehran and Baghdad was Pyongyang, which Bush branded part of his “axis of evil.”

“President Bush deliberately stopped the one negotiations — which were almost completed — which conceivably could have prevented this problem,” Perry said. “He did that with the belief that he had better a negotiation underway. That negotiation obviously did not succeed nor did the negotiations of the Obama administration.

“Without assessing the theoretical value of what they were doing, the result is pretty straightforward,” Perry said, noting the current state of affairs.

In his 2015 book “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” Perry summed up the results of U.S. policy toward the North since the Clinton administration as “perhaps the most unsuccessful exercise of diplomacy in our country’s history.”

“My own assessment of why it did not succeed in the case of the Bush administration is that I think they were just distracted by the Iraq War,” Perry said. “They didn’t put enough time or attention into it. Who knows what would have happened if they had really made it a priority and worked at it. But they did not.”

Risk of a new war

Still, Perry said, that while the Bush administration was preoccupied with the Middle East, his successor, President Barack Obama, actually had a policy — under which the North’s nuclear and missile progress continued.

“It was called ‘strategic patience,’ ” he said. “Nearly as I can determine, what strategic patience means is that ‘if we wait long enough, North Korea will collapse.’ I think that’s a forlorn hope. I’d be happy to see them collapse, but there’s no reason at all to believe that is going to happen.”

Instead, what Perry fears may occur amid the tense security environment on the Korean Peninsula is the eruption of smaller-level hostilities into a wider conflict that drags in the U.S. and Japan.

“If that happens, that is if we have a ‘new Korean war,’ the North would surely lose … and at that point, seeing the end of the regime, they might unleash an armageddon with their nuclear weapons,” Perry said. “So in a sense they could blunder into a war and if they blunder into it, they could use nuclear weapons in a last ditch effort.”

For Perry, this scenario is the most likely one among the various theories of how the North could spark a conflict. He rules out any kind of surprise attack against South Korea, Japan or the United States, saying such a move would be “suicidal” and would violate Pyongyang’s No. 1 goal: survival of the regime.

“They’re not seeking martyrdom. They’re not an al-Qaida or ISIL,” he said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group.

“However they use their weapons will be based on a calculation that the use is oriented around … first and foremost the survival of the regime, the sustaining of the Kim dynasty.

“That, I’m quite confident, is their primary goal in life.”

And while North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his regime has often been labeled as “crazy,” including by former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain last month, Perry believes this to be a false assumption.

“People who say they are crazy, I think they’re wrong,” Perry said. “They’re a pariah state. They take outrageous actions, but those actions are all designed to strengthen their hold on power.”

According to Perry, a grasp of this is necessary however U.S. policy toward the North proceeds.

Opening for negotiations?

New U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed that his administration’s policy toward Pyongyang will differ from Obama’s, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declaring the end of strategic patience.

Trump has spoken alternatively of both sitting down for hamburgers with Kim and of doing whatever it takes to prevent him from mastering the technology to mount a nuclear weapon on a long-range missile capable of hitting the continental U.S.

But after the North’s four-missile test-launch last month, which it said was a rehearsal for targeting U.S. bases in Japan, Trump has taken a decidedly harsher tone.

Last month, Tillerson said all options — including pre-emptive military strikes — were “on the table.” Earlier this year, he also ripped a claim by Kim that preparations were in the final stages, saying: “It won’t happen.”

The North has responded with its own rhetoric, lashing out at the Trump administration’s approach to the isolated nation and likening it to the Obama administration’s moves.

Brinkmanship aside, Perry believes there is an opening for talks.

“He might actually try to negotiate with them, which would be a good thing — if he negotiated from some real understanding of where they are coming from,” Perry said of Trump, cautioning that a good negotiator must strive to understand what drives the other side.

“I think I do understand what drives the other side, which makes me a little pessimistic about a negotiation based on threats and bluster.”

Beyond grasping what the North hopes to achieve, Perry believes there is another compound that is essential for the U.S. to make a serious run at negotiations with Pyongyang: China.